Synergy – not just an overworked buzzword

It’s a cold, raw, foggy day here in Virginia and it gave me a good excuse to blog and do research on the internet using a great little application called Synergy from Sourceforge.

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems without special hardware. Synergy is open source and released under the GNU Public License (GPL).

It took less than a half hour to install it on three computers. (It would have taken even less time if I had read the instructions first.)

It is very natural to use. The cursor flows from one screen to the other without a pause and the keyboard acts on whatever screen the cursor is on.

Working at this console array is unexpectedly liberating. I can have open browsers on two screens while I create a post on another. I can cut and paste between screens, which adds a new dimension to writing and editing copy.

With Synergy, I can finally make effective use of two laptops that were gathering dust for most of the time. I could add many more if I had the need. This configuration speeds up production and the price is right.